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@Gibdog101 - I agree. I think my preferred outcome would be for SQM to buyout only Lithium Ridge, giving ATM plentiful funds to finally move to the "Phase 2" tin plant at Uis, with 10x the current scale, properly low AISC, and still with the upside potential of Brandberg West.

Or did he mean Iceland ? ;-)

@nesty - I can't see SQM wanting the entire company - it's only LR they are interested in, they've no interest in a small tin operation.

Thankfully AV and the team have restructured Andrada so that each asset is under a separate holding company. LR is owned by Grace Simba Investments, and BW is owned by Grace Timon Investments.

They were obviously thinking ahead on this one. If the time comes, it'll be easy to spin off an asset.

Can I assume this board no longer thinks AV is “inept” and “screwing everything up” ;-)

I think it’s just referring to the fact that the jig plant was collateral for the loan - that was explained in the initial funding RNS.

As the biggest shareholder in ATM, it would have been extremely unlikely that Orange Trust would foreclose and cause all sorts of problems. Besides, they’d supported this loan being outstanding long past its initial redemption date, and they could have forced conversion at a much lower equity price, but didn’t.

Of course, we’ll never know the full details, but I don’t see any drama in it.

@TDT - come on now, you don’t believe that the assets of Andrada are a “tailings processing operation”.

Getting silly now. I’ll refrain from further comment.

@nesty - "AV has never delivered, I don't think our research has been wrong in the instance of the overall asset."

Well, he must have delivered on exploration at least, otherwise you wouldn't be able to "research" the asset.

I've been critical of his comms in the past, but I just can't agree with many of the comments on here today saying he screws everything up and has never delivered. He, and the rest of the company, are certainly not perfect, but they have, without a doubt, built a mining company that has huge potential. Sure, they haven't realised that potential yet, but it's still there.

Agree Richy. This is positive news - removes a debt burden and puts shares into the hands of a long term backer who have never sold a single share.

Constantly complaining about things not having worked doesn't improve anything. Yes, of course, I'd like to have seen the ore-sorters in place by now, but there are reasons why they are not. The company have disclosed the re-engineering of the front end to incorporate the lithium circuit as the reason - there might be a very good reason why they chose to do that. I'm sure it wasn't a decision taken lightly.

By some of the comments on this board, you'd swear that building and growing a mining company is the easiest thing possible, and if you just follow steps 1,2 and 3, then bingo, you have a Tier 1 multi-commodity mining major.

Well, it's a close run thing, but average tin selling price in H1 was $33,154. If they get an average price around $39,000 for H2, then that'll bring in around $3m of extra revenue, which will be almost pure extra profit. Convert the currency, hope for some extra cost savings elsewhere, and they should absolutely be on break-even or making money right now.

If they do get the new jig working for a number of weeks before the end of the financial year, they should be comfortably in "making money" mode.

I don't think there's any court case, but there's a committee meeting of the Doro !Nawas Conservancy, which might prove more important than any court case.

They are meeting to decide whether to withdraw from the Joint Management Area - and it sounds likely that they will withdraw.

If they do, it's thought the JMA agreement will collapse. That's good news for Goantagab mining, as it's the JMA that has been party to the court cases so far trying to stop the mining.

As Goantagab falls entirely within the Sorris Sorris Conservancy, which falls under the Daure Daman Traditional Authority, and given they back the mining - if the JMA isn't functioning as an entity, the opposition to the mining restarting gets substantially weaker.

Might still need a future court case to get the mining going again, but there should be less of a group opposing it if the JMA falls apart.

I think that's how it all hangs together anyway - it's pretty confusing......

And let's also recognise that regardless of what the news actually was - it's great to see them actually including ALL the news, good and bad - ore-sorters, jig, Goantagab, Uis lithium etc.

We've all complained long enough that the updates don't include everything, so for me, it's really refreshing to see a pretty comprehensive update - good news and bad.

@HarChris is right here. With tin now at $38k as opposed to the $33k it was during this first half, ATM are taking in an extra $4.5m per year, even without the new jig plant.

It's unfortunate that this is just due to the tin price, rather than actions the company have taken, but it benefits them nonetheless.

The jig issues don't sound too serious, so still a reasonable chance it's up and running before the next quarterly at the end of December - then it's a whole new ball game.

Antroot, your “ So on annual basis that's about 1 million in income” could be read wrongly.

It should be 1m in income on a MONTHLY basis.

I actually think it’ll be higher if they get similar tin recovery to the existing plant, but 12m additional income at 36k tin price should be the minimum extra we see.

Absolutely we are making decent money. If we get an average tin selling price of say 36k for the quarter, and AISC stays the same as last quarter at 31k, we're making 5k per tonne, on 273 tonnes for the quarter. Nearly $10m revenue, and $1.4m profit (excluding other expenses outside of AISC).

With the 2nd jig, AISC should fall (AV has mentioned by 4-5k), and output up - how much depends on grade but even using Uis ore and not Goantagab, output should be up 50% ish.

If tin stays around these levels, ATM should be on the verge of being in very good shape. They need to get this 2nd jig up and running to take advantage of these tin prices and get the debt paid down.

And then immediately drops nearly 5% !!! Only ATM could manage that.

I don't think he's adding to his stake personally - these are the rest of the settlement shares (Baobab Loan etc.) , taking him up to the 9.4m shares they listed against him in the prospectus.

This is the total now - so it'll be interesting to see if he starts unloading them any time soon, and what that does to the share price. Given the very low volumes it could drop like a stone if anyone started to sell in any reasonable size.

A quick read though shows the gravy train continues. DIrectors pay in 2025 was £286,941.

The final results include the statement - "During this period, the Company has been actively engaged in cost reductions and efficiency drives to reduce costs".

Since then they've increased the number of directors up to 7, and the directors pay in 2026 will be at least £318,833 - and that's only the published figures for 4 of them. We don't yet know how much Danilo Lange, Selina Hayes and Kriss Tremaine are being paid. It must take it to near £450,000.

Ali Farid Khwaja alone is being paid £220,000 base salary. Even Fryer managed to restrict himself to £200,000.

Great job on the cost reductions guys. With a bit more effort you might manage to double the Directors pay as part of these cost saving measures !!!!

Is it the accumulated losses, that now stand at nearly £8m, that are of value to NIU ?

Can they fold one of their profit making arms into CRTM, and use the accumulated losses to offset profits elsewhere I wonder. It's the only thing I can see of value to them. As you say, they don't seem to be setting themselves up for running a mine, just more financial engineering.

Well, Final Results are out - I haven't even read them yet because I was distracted by the Chairmans Statement at the start. He refers to the company as "CRMT", not once, but three times.

Took me 1 minute to spot that.

What a bunch of clowns.........they don't even proof read their own end of year accounts.

Perhaps struggling to find all the receipts for Fryers expenses......

One thing for sure, it isn't because there's so much revenue to account for it's taking longer than they thought.